The main problem with anxiety is that you get completely stuck in your head – like, super stuck. You feel like a broken record and no matter how hard you try to talk it out or talk yourself down, you can feel yourself continue to spiral to the point of a physical and mental breakdown.
Starting tomorrow, we can finally see sight of spring! After the south’s sweltering, never-ending summers, we come to appreciate winter – but there’s something about being so close to warm, sunny weather that gets me so excited. The sunscreen is so close I can already smell it!
Another aspect of spring I’ve come to love as an adult is spring. cleaning. Lame, I know. Winter is so good for curling up in bed to watch a movie or read a book, but with the warmer weather comes a bustle that makes us realize just how sloppy we became during our cold weather-induced laze.
Even the most happy-go-lucky people run into bad days – not that I’m saying that’s particularly me, because Lord knows I definitely hit my wit’s end. My point being, we all experience some not so desirable days/situations, and we all search for ways to alleviate the frustration. Everyone has different ways they like to destress, but here’s generally how I cope with my less than perfect days.
I’m a firm believer in the power that community holds. It might seem like sure a simple concept, but it’s true that the stresses and hurt we feel when we’re plugged into a solid, like-minded group of people is significantly less than when we feel isolated and alone.
If you’ve been keeping up with me at all then you’re no stranger to the fact that I was caught between a rock and a hard place this summer when my anxiety began to feel like too much to bear and made it hard to get out of bed. I experienced a lot of stressors within the course of 2 weeks – I lost a lot I didn’t anticipate losing. It came with a lot of damaged self-esteem, rejection, abandonment, and a lot of questioning if I’d ever be good enough. I know – it sounds pretty pathetic; but that’s the point the events I had gone through in such a short amount of time this past summer led me to. It didn’t really matter how many times I told myself “it has nothing to do with you,” or “this doesn’t define you,” I still managed to find a way to make myself feel as if surely there was something I could have done to make things different. That’s how the Enemy works; he has such a way of being able to twist our thoughts that even when we know things are out of our control, he can still find a way to be in the back of our mind saying “you weren’t good enough – and maybe you never will be.”
It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
And the most stressful time of the year.
Between finals and/or the holidays, it’s so easy to get overwhelmed and have a million things on your mind and feel frazzled 25/8. We’re all susceptible to feeling that way all year round, and all that clutter in our minds builds up to the point of stress, anxiety, depression, and overall exhaustion – all of which can start to take a physical toll on our bodies if it goes on too long.
I have been going to counseling for my anxiety for about a year now. After realizing just how much it has started to consume my life, I became determined to try and get to the bottom of it and try and find out what it is that makes me tick. Granted, that’s a lot easier said than done. The mind has billions of corners and there’s an endless amount of questions we can try and ask ourselves to find every nook and cranny to look for little parts of us that make us who and what we are. Continue reading “The Question You Need to Ask if You Put Yourself on the Backburner”
Bad days will happen; bad situations will happen. And we’re entitled to a few of them – we’re only human. It’s natural to be brought down when life doesn’t go perfectly according to plan. Further than that, it’s totally understandable. No one’s going to blame you for being upset. But what happens when bad days turn into bad weeks, and bad weeks into bad months? At what point do we say enough is enough and start trying to turn “I can’t” into “I can” and “I won’t” into “I will?”
